Many smoking devices have been proposed through the years as improvements upon, or alternatives to, smoking products that require combusting tobacco for use. Many of those devices purportedly have been designed to provide the sensations associated with cigarette, cigar, or pipe smoking, but without delivering considerable quantities of incomplete combustion and pyrolysis products that result from the burning of tobacco. To this end, there have been proposed numerous smoking products, flavor generators, and medicinal inhalers that utilize electrical energy to vaporize or heat a volatile material, or attempt to provide the sensations of cigarette, cigar, or pipe smoking without burning tobacco to a significant degree. See, for example, the various alternative smoking articles, aerosol delivery devices and heat generating sources set forth in the background art described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,726,320 to Robinson et al., U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2013/0255702 to Griffith Jr. et al., U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2014/0000638 to Sebastian et al., U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2014/0060554 to Collett et al., U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2014/0096781 to Sears et al., U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2014/0096782 to Ampolini et al., and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/011,992 to Davis et al., filed Aug. 28, 2013, which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Certain existing embodiments of aerosol delivery devices include a single, unitary, elongated outer housing that is substantially tubular in shape. In these embodiments, all of the components of the aerosol delivery device are at least partially contained within the single outer housing. However, it would be desirable to provide an alternate form or configuration of an aerosol delivery device that enhances user experience or allows for alternative manufacturing techniques. Thus, advances with respect to configurations of aerosol delivery devices and methods of assembly thereof may be desirable.